


A Private History of a Campaign That Failed (amended)

by Todesengel



Series: Mag7 Bingo [1]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-17
Updated: 2011-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I had got part of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Private History of a Campaign That Failed (amended)

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: 1st person narrative. With my deepest apologies to Mark Twain, and my sincerest thanks to Mendax and Randi2204 for the hand holding, cheerleading, the occasionally head smacking, and for telling me in no uncertain terms that, yes, it _would_ be cheating if I just quoted the entire Mark Twain essay and that would be entirely unacceptable. All passages in italics are taken directly from Mark Twain's [The Private History of a Campaign That Failed](http://www.classicauthors.net/twain/merrytales/merrytales1.html). Everything else is the work of my fevered imagination.

_You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war, is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it but didn't? Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of it, and then stepped out again permanently. These, by their very numbers, are respectable and therefore entitled to a sort of voice, not a loud one, but a modest one, not a boastful one but an apologetic one…In that summer of 1861…I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent, Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom Lyman...was made captain; I was made second lieutenant…There were fifteen of us …[and] we called ourselves the Marion Rangers.…[One of us] was Ed Stevens, son of the town jeweller, trim built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat, bright, educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was simply a holiday. [Another was] Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice…[Another] Joe Bowers…He was made orderly sergeant, Stevens was made corporal._

I had not met Ed Stevens before, of course, for he was a newcomer to our town, his mother having married Mr. Stevens only the year before. She had come to Hannibal as a widow and set the whole town a-buzzing, for she had not behaved as a widow should, and scandalized some of the older matrons over the haste in which the banns had been read. But the matrons would be scandalized by any old thing, and Mrs. Stevens, formerly the widow Standish, had been a model of decorum ever since. At any rate, Stevens added much to the gaiety of our merry band, and all the lads thought his fine cut claret-colored coat gave our little band a rather refined air. In his coat and cravat, and with his shoes and hair shining in the sun, we all found it rather hard to believe he was the youngest of us all at seventeen – at least so long as he kept his mouth shut and didn't make too much of an ass of himself in his pursuit of fun.

_We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary, then toward midnight we stole in couples and from various directions to the Griggith place beyond town... Our objective point was the hamlet of New London, ten miles away in Ralls County._

_The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that could not be kept up. The steady drudging became like work, the play had somehow oozed out of it, the stillness of the woods and the somberness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the spirits of the boys and presently the talking died out and each person shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second hour nobody said a word._

Even Stevens was quiet, though he was the last to fall silent. He had joined in our idle boasting at first, and had even taught us all an old marching song whose lyrics I should never wish to repeat in mixed company – though in the company of the other boys I found them highly satisfactory. But all too soon he began to complain that his feet were sore and his rifle was heavy; that the air was too damp; that the flies were too thick – not at all like the flies in Charlotte or Atlanta which we soon came to understand were a far more genteel and polite breed of fly altogether. The air of holiday was quickly fading for him, and it was not long before his sour mood affected us all, Bowers worst of all, for Stevens would take to idly shifting his rifle from shoulder to shoulder, from upright to pointing forward like a dog on a scent, and he would be hitting Bowers in the back every time he did so.

Finally Bowers, who had jumped like a frog on a hot tin plate the first time Stevens' gun poked him in the back, rounded on him and demanded he either choose a shoulder on which to rest his gun, or he (Bowers) would choose one for him (Stevens), adding that if Stevens should decline to rest his gun upon his shoulder Bowers knew of a far less commodious place where Stevens could stick it. For a long moment, it looked as though the two would come to blows, but the night had drawn off even that fire and Stevens eventually looked away and mumbled an apology, and Bowers replied that it was quite all right, only he hoped Stevens would be more careful of his weapon in the future.

And that was the end of the talking for a while, for even Stevens's spirits were finally oppressed by the somber night.

_Now we approached a log farmhouse where, according to reports, there was a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt and... began to whisper a plan of assault upon the house... We realized with a cold suddenness that here was no jest--we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision. We said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers he could go ahead and do it, but if he waited for us to follow him he would wait a long time…_

_We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled in vines and torn by briers. At last we reached an open place in a safe region and we sat down, blown and hot, to cool off and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed but the rest of us were cheerful. We had flanked the farmhouse. We had made our first military movement and it was a success. We had nothing to fret about, we were feeling just the other way. Horseplay and laughing began again. The expedition had become a holiday frolic once more._

Stevens in particular seemed especially gay, though his wonderful coat had been badly torn and a nasty fall had torn out the left knee on his trousers. He nattered on in a way that grew tiresome after awhile, and told a bawdy story that he then had to explain to poor dumb Smith, who had no notion of what went on between the sexes. When we stopped to rest and empty the dirt out of our shoes – fine enough for town, but not meant for all this nighttime wandering – I pressed him for the cause of his good cheer, hoping to take some of it on myself, for the joy of our successful military maneuver had worn off and my feet – so long accustomed to the planking of a riverboat – were sorer than a mule with a toothache. Stevens seemed taken aback at my question, then he laughed gaily and explained that he was simply eager to fight for our side, and thought he'd look rather good in gray.

I did not believe him, of course, for he had the same glint in his eyes some of the more obvious card-sharps got right before they were thrown off the boat for cheating.

_…[W]e straggled into New London [around dawn], soiled, heel blistered, fagged with out little march, and all of us, except Stevens, in a sour and raspy humor and privately down on the war. We stacked our shabby old shotguns in Colonel Ralls's barn and then went in a body and breakfasted with [him]…_

_Then we formed in line of battle and marched four hours to a shady and pleasant piece of woods on the border of a far reaching expanse of a flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war, our kind of war…_

_We occupied an old maple sugar camp whose half rotted troughs were still propped against the trees. A long corn crib served fro sleeping quarters fro the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, were Mason's farm and house, and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers began to arrive from several different directions with mules and horses for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which, they judged, might be about three months. The animals were…mainly young and frisky and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time, for we were town boys and ignorant of horsemanship…_

_We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon, then, afternoons, we rode off here and there in squads a few miles and visited the farmer's girls and had a youthful good time and got an honest dinner or supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content._

Not long after we arrived – a day, perhaps – we met some men carting three 6-pounder guns. I do not recall if they had looted them from some Union outpost, or were merely transporting them North from a fort further South. Nor do I recall if they were moving the guns towards the main body of militia men, or away, or if they were headed for us all along. I do recall, however, that the tongue of the third gun's carriage had snapped, and the men transporting it were standing about discussing what to do with the weapon – whether they could find someone to repair it in time, or perhaps they could find a man with a cart and they could load the gun into it and continue on their way.

Lyman solved the problem for them in his typical fashion by declaring the gun property of the Marion Rangers and confiscating it for our use. He had the full support of all the boys behind him, and although it took some doing we eventually persuaded the men to let us have the gun, and the ammunition that had been on the cart with it. The carters weren't happy, of course, but they determined that it was better to leave one gun in the hands of true soldiers to the cause than to lose a day of traveling. Besides, we all reckoned that the war would be over long before we would ever have cause to fire the cannon in battle.

After the carters resumed their journey, Smith and I tied a rope around the canon and used the winch from the well by the corn crib to drag it into our camp, and we soon added artillery practice to our horsemanship drills. All of the boys took a turn with the gun, though we wouldn't let Bowers take a second since his first shot hit almost hit Captain Lyman while he was performing his daily ablutions behind one of the old sugar troughs.

In time, most of us wearied of the noise and soon only Stevens and a few of the privates were shooting the gun. Stevens quite naturally assumed the rank of gun captain, explaining that his rank as corporal made him the only viable choice, and that as gun captain he was naturally the one who must light the fuse – the other boys were there to point the barrel of the gun where he said and make sure they didn't get themselves crushed under the gun's wheels. I think he felt especially fine standing there in his gray coat, a smoldering cigar in one hand, and shouting commands to the boys to point the gun barrel down, then up, then heave it to the right – no, he meant the left – and then bending low to touch the glowing end of his cigar to the touchhole, grinning like a fool at the crash and recoil of the cannon's fire, the spurt of flame, and glorying in the accuracy of his aim.

_For a time, life was idly delicious. It was perfect. There was no war to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was rumored that the enemy were advancing in our direction from over Hyde's prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us and general consternation. It was a rude awakening from out pleasant trance. The rumor was but a rumor, nothing definite about it, so in the confusion we did not know which way to retreat…[Eventually i]t was…decide[d] that we should fall back on Mason's farm._

_It was after dark by this time and as we could not know how soon the enemy might arrive…_

We took only the guns and ammunition on our retreat, leaving that wonderful cannon behind – although Stevens did have Smith drive a piece of iron into the touch hole to "spike" it, as the jargon goes, and render it useless for the enemy. I asked him what we would do if the rumor proved false and we needed the gun. He looked as flummoxed as a dead ox for a minute and then said he hadn't even thought of that, but if it turned out there were no Union soldiers, then when we returned he would have Smith bore a new touch hole in the gun and it would be as good as new. And besides, it was better to have a gun nobody could use than to allow an honest Southern gun to fall into Northern hands, where it could be used on honest Southern men.

His answer satisfied me, and the two of us joined the rest of our group in legging it towards Mason's farm as fast as the darkness and the rain and rugged terrain and our fellow soldiers would allow.

In that wet darkness, with the threat of the enemy so close at hand, it was inevitable that Bowers, the clumsy oaf, would slip; and that in slipping he would take the rest of us down with him, tumbling down a steep muddy slope, through briars and over stones, and finally ending up in the brook at the bottom. The ammunition was ruined, our powder keg lost, and ourselves bruised and bloody and not at all sanguine to climbing back up that hill. Being attacked by a pack of dogs upon reaching Mason's farm did nothing to improve our moods, though old man Mason and his son rescued us soon enough. The dog attached to Bowers' leg proved reluctant to release his hold, however, and had to be driven off through the judicious application of scalding water – of which Bowers got his share and we all agreed it was only fair that he should.

_We now went into the house and they began to ask us a world of questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything concerning who or what we were running from…_

The old gentleman soon grew disgusted with our ways and took us to task, asking us why there were no picket guards, and we hadn't sent scouts to spy upon the enemy and learn his strength, and why had we just run from our camp with nothing more than a rumor whispered in our ears, and so on and so forth, shaming us mightily until he brought us lower than the rain and the dogs ever could. And so we went to bed, unhappy and ashamed, and slept badly until we were roused by a shout and the howling chorus of those damn dogs. Straightaway we hurried forth to find out what the alarm was all about, though because we were so sleep-dazed we ended up running into each other and up and down the stairs and cursing Mason and the war and each other for a good long while before eventually making our way outside to where the alarming horseman waited. He told us that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to hunt down all militia bands like ours and hang us dead. The news sent old Mason into a flurry and he rushed us out of his house with all haste, and sent us into the raining night with one of his negroes to show us where we and our damning guns might hide ourselves among the ravines a half mile away.

_It was a dismal and heart breaking time. We were like to be drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the campaign and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did that._

It was a long, wet night, every sound the tramp of Union boots; every snapping twig the harbinger of our death. We were fractious and weary when the night wore itself out at last, and our ill humor was in no way mollified when we learned that the alarm had manifestly been a false one. Even the promise of the breakfast did nothing to change our moods, though by the time we finished eating – for it was a true Missouri country breakfast, of fried chicken and hot corn pone and coffee and milk and bacon and all the things young men crave after spending a tiresome night crouching in the rain – we were once more inclined to look kindly upon our fellow men.

We spent the next few days at the Mason's farm, idle and useless, horribly constrained by the customs of that place which decreed that the household went to bed at dark – not at midnight as we were so accustomed to doing. And we lay awake until that hour, every second of the ticking clock an eternity in our minds. We could do nothing and think of nothing and listen to nothing but the plaintive sound of the spinning wheel coming from some distant room, moaning out its wearisome song of homesickness and the emptiness of life.

And so, it was with something nearing joy that we received news that the enemy were on the track, and we were at last able to leave that dreary place and return to our camp, brimming anew with the old warrior spirit.

_Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumors always turned out to be false, so at last we even began to grow indifferent to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn crib with the same old warning, the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable._

It was a good resolve, while it lasted. But too soon, we felt once more the oppressive night. Our gaiety fled. Even the forced jokes and forced laughs left us, and the entire company was silent and still and nervous – full of worry and apprehension. We said we would stay. We were committed. And not one among us was brave enough to suggest we should go.

I do not know who made the first move, or perhaps the thought struck us all at once, for a noiseless ripple of motion passed down the line and each man among us knew he was not the only one to creep up to our forward wall and stare hard through a crack between the logs. Every second was felt. Every breath punctuated by the thundering of our hearts. But there was nothing there but the late hour and a woodsy stillness and a veiled moonlight just strong enough to mark out the objects.

And then a muffled noise! Hoof-beats! And from the woods, a figure appeared on the forest path, rising up like smoke – a shapeless mass that seemed to have a full company behind it.

I grabbed my gun in the darkness and pushed it through a crack in the logs. I was so dazed with fright I hardly knew what I was doing, could hardly hear anything above my rasping breath. Someone shouted "Fire" and I pulled the trigger. It seemed to me as though there were a hundred flashes, a thousand reports, and then the man fell from his horse.

_Somebody said, hardly audibly, "Good, we've got him. Wait for the rest!"_

But there were no others. There was nothing – no sound, no whisper of a leaf, no owl hooting out its kill. Just the uncanny stillness and the smell of damp earth and the late night.

At last, wondering, we crept out from behind the wall and approached the man. He lay there upon his back, perfectly revealed by the moon, the blood a black stain upon his white shirt. His chest heaved with long gasps, his mouth gaped open, his arms splayed out and his fingers clutching at the ground.

_The thought shot through me that I was a murderer, that I had killed a man, a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead, and I would have given anything then, my own life freely, to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy, they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of the shadow of his eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather that he had stabbed me than he had done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and his child, and, I thought with a new despair, "This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he."_

He died not long after. Died in a war, killed fairly and legitimately. Killed in a battle, you might say, though it was not much of one. One man, unarmed and alone, against fifteen boys and their ancient guns who played at being soldiers. And yet, though he was our enemy, we mourned him as though he were our brother. We wept for this man we did not know and declared that if we had to do it again, we would not shoot him, would not hurt him – not unless he attacked first.

As we poured over the details of this tragedy, I soon learned that I was not the only one to fire; there had been five others, and this division of guilt was a great relief to me. For it let me think that it was not my bullet that had killed him – it was one of the others. And it was only my fear dazed mind that magnified those six shots into a single volley.

_The man was not in uniform and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country, that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him got to preying on me every night, I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war, that all war must just be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled…These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason, for at the bottom I did not believe I had touched this man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood for in all my small experiences with guns, I had not hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing._

I was not the only one who thought thus. Stevens, too, was deeply troubled by this death. He had been one of the other five to fire upon the man; perhaps his had been the fatal shot, for he had proved to be quite the marksman in our daily drills. He grew cantankerous and shrewish as the days passed, and drank often from a little silver flask. His wit grew sharper, less charming – like his smile, which was now marred by a missing tooth, knocked out of his mouth by Bowers during a short, fierce brawl. No one could approach him without being bled, and finally Lyman told me that as second lieutenant it was my duty to deal with him. I protested and said that it was clearly the role of the orderly sergeant or, barring that, a private; I was an officer and therefore too valuable to the cause to be thrown to Stevens's ire. But that held no sway with the other boys and finally they had their way and I approached Stevens.

'Say, Ed, you've been right ornery these past few days.'

'I have seen dead men before,' he told me, 'but have never had cause to kill one myself. That I have another's death upon my soul surely grants me leave to be something other than my usually charming self.'

'You don't know it was your bullet.'

Stevens just gave me an old fashioned stare and went back to his flask.

The rest of my war was much the same as that of which I have already told. We fall back from camp to camp, from house to house, always running. Always feeling more like foolish boys, for the men we met in those camps had clearly come to make war. They were hard men; and even more, they were **men**.

_The last camp which we fell back on was in a hollow near the village of Florida where I was born, in Monroe County. Here we were warned one day that a Union Colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband… We had done our share, killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let [the others] go and kill the rest and that would end the war._

_The thoughtful will not throw this war paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value; it is not an unfair picture of what went on in may a militia camp in the first months of the rebellion…when all [the green recruit's] circumstances were new and strange and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had turned them from rabbits into soldiers...There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet, it learned its trade presently and helped to fight the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating._


End file.
